The Gas Heart: ACT II
EYEBROW: We're going to the races today.
MOUTH: Let's not forget the camera.
EYE: Well hello.
EAR: The mechanical battalion of the wrists of shriveled
hand-shakes.
Mouth exits.
NOSE (shouts) : Clytemnestra is winning!
EAR: What do you mean you didn't know that Clytemnestra was a
race horse?
EYE: Amorous jostlings lead everywhere. But the season is
propitious. Take care, dear friends, the season is satisfactory. It
chews up words. It distends silences in accordions. Snakes line up
everywhere in their polished eyeglasses. And what do you do with the
bells of eyes, asked the entrepreneur.
EAR: "Seekers and curious people," answered Ear. She finishes the
nerves of others in the white porcelain shell. She inflates.
NOSE: Fan having a seizure of wood,
light body with enormous laugh.
EYEBROW: The driving-belts of the mills of dreams brush against
the woolen lower jaws of our carnivorous plants.
EAR: Yes, I know, the dreams with hair.
EYE: Dreams of angels.
EAR: Dreams of cloth, paper watches.
EYE: The enormous and solemn dreams of inaugurations.
EAR: Of angels in helicopters.
NOSE: Yes I know.
EYE: The angels of conversation.
NECK: Yes I know.
EAR: Angels in cushions.
NOSE: Yes I know.
EYE: Angels in ice.
NOSE: Yes I know.
EAR: Angels in local neighborhoods.
NOSE: Yes, I know.
EAR: The ice is broken, said our fathers to our mothers, in the
first springtime of their life which was both honorable and
gracious.
EYE: This is how the hour understands the hour, the admiral his
fleet of words. Winter child the palm of my hand.
Mouth enters.
MOUTH: I've made a great deal of money.
NOSE: Thank you not bad.
MOUTH: I swim in the fountain. I have necklaces of goldfish.
NECK: Thank you not bad.
MOUTH: I'm wearing the latest French coiffure.
NOSE: Thank you not bad.
EYE: I've already seen it in Paris.
NECK: Thank you not bad.
MOUTH: I don't understand anything about the rumblings of the
next war.
NECK: Thank you not bad.
MOUTH: And I'm getting thinner every day.
NOSE: Thank you not bad.
MOUTH: A young man followed me in the street on his bicycle.
NECK: Thank you not bad.
MOUTH: I'll be on my ship next Monday.
NOSE: Thank you not bad.
EYE: Clytemnestra the wind is blowing. The wind is blowing. On
the quays of decorated bells. Turn your back cut off the wind. Your
eyes are stones because they only see the wind and rain.
Clytemnestra. Have you felt the horrors of the war? Do you know how
to slide on the sweetness of my speech? Don't you breathe the same
air as I do? Don't you speak the same lan-guage? In what limitless
metal are your fingers of misery in-laid? What music filtered by what
mysterious curtain prevents my words from penetrating the wax of your
brain? Certainly, stone grinds you and bones strike against your
muscles, but language chopped into chance slices will never release
in you the stream which employs white methods.
Mouth exits.
EAR: Doubtless you know the calendars of birds?
EYE: What?
EAR: Three hundred and sixty-five birds--every day a bird flies
away--every hour a feather falls--every two hours somebody writes a
poem-somebody cuts it apart with scissors.
NOSE: I've already seen it in Paris.
EYE: What a philosophy. What a poet. I don't like poetry.
EAR: Then you must love cold drinks? Or a countryside that rolls
like a dancer's permanent waves? Or ancient cities? Or the black
arts?
EYE: I know all about that.
NOSE: A little more life on the stage.
EYEBROW: Gray drum for the flower of your lung.
EAR: My lung is made out of
lung and is not a mere cardboard
front if you really want to know.
EYE: But, Miss.
EAR: Please, Sir.
EYE: Bony sacraments in military prisons painting doesn't much
interest me. I like a quiet countryside with considerable gal-loping.
NOSE: Your piece is quite charming but you really don't come away
enriched.
EYEBROW: There's nothing to be enriched by in it everything is
easy to follow and even come away with. An outlet of thought from
which a whip will emerge. The whip will be a forget-me-not. The
forget-me-not a living inkwell. The inkwell will dress a doll.
EAR: Your daughter is quite charming.
EYE: You're very considerate.
EAR: Do you care for sports?
EYE: Yes, this method of communication is very practical.
EAR: You know of course that I own a garage.
EYE: Thank you very much.
EAR: It's spring it's spring.
NOSE: I tell you it's two yards.
NECK: I tell you it's three yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's four yards.
NECK: I tell you it's five yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's six yards.
NECK: I tell you it's seven yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's eight yards.
NECK: I tell you it's nine yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's ten yards.
NECK: I tell you it's eleven yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's twelve yards.
NECK: I tell you it's thirteen yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's fourteen yards.
NECK: I tell you it's fifteen yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's sixteen yards.
EAR: Thank you thank you very good.
EYE: Love-sport or indictment
summary of the directories of love--love
accumulated by centuries of weights and numbers
with its breasts of copper and crystal
god is a nervous tic of shifting sand dunes
nervous and agile leafs through countrysides and the pockets of
onlookers
the hair-do of death thrown on the flail outwardly new
friendship with error delicately juxtaposed.
NOSE: I tell you love's seventeen yards.
NECK: I tell you it'seighteen yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's nineteen yards.
NECK: I tell you it's twenty yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's twenty-one yards.
NECK: I tell you it's twenty-two yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's twenty-three yards.
NECK: I tell you it's twenty-four yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's twenty-five yards.
NECK: I tell you it's twenty-six yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's twenty-seven yards.
NECK: I tell you it's twenty-eight yards.
NOSE: I tell you it's twenty-nine yards.
EAR: You have a very pretty head
you ought to have it sculpted
you ought to give the grandest of parties
to know nature better and to love nature
and sink forks into your sculpture
the grasses of the ventilators flatter the lovely days.
EYEBROW: Fire! Fire!
I think Clytemnestra's ablaze.
CURTAIN
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